Author丨Li Huanhuan
Editor丨Tangerine
The actual controller of the company disappeared, the legal person was restricted from high consumption, and the high arrears were left unattended. The closure of the offline brand experience store ripped off the last fig leaf of the second factory in Hankou......
The last "façade", withdrawn
Just after the May Day holiday, some consumers found that an Internet celebrity check-in place located on Lihuangpi Road in Wuhan's historical and cultural district - Hankou No. 2 Factory Amusement and Le Factory, that is, the offline brand experience store of Wuhan's local soda "Hankou No. 2 Factory" was closed.
Not only that, but the decoration outside the store has been demolished, and many things in the store have been removed, leaving only some large objects such as booths and shelves, which look like a mess.
Since Lihuangpi Road is one of the popular attractions in Wuhan, there is a large flow of people here on weekends and holidays. During the past May Day holiday, many tourists also posted on social media their experience of coming to the Hankou No. 2 Factory Experience Store to check in and take pictures. Now, the sudden closure of stores without any "news" has left some consumers feeling quite inexplicable.
Nei Sanjun learned from some former employees of the Hankou No. 2 factory that the exact closing time of the experience store was May 5. As for the reason for the closure, an insider revealed that it was because the rent of the property was going to rise.
"The landlord suddenly increased the rent to three times the original one, and the monthly rent was close to the level of 200,000 yuan, so it was impossible to make a profit." K Jun, a former core employee of Hankou No. 2 Factory, said. According to his understanding, the lease signed between the Hankou No. 2 Factory Experience Store and the property will expire on April 30, 2024, and the new rent for the renewal is unacceptable to the current Hankou No. 2 Factory, so it can only be withdrawn.
(Comparison before and after withdrawal)
As for whether it will find another place or close the store altogether after the withdrawal, it is not yet known. But what is certain is that although the current Hankou No. 2 factory has not declared bankruptcy, it has come to the edge of the precipice.
"The company is gone, there is no one, the total salary owed by the company to the employees has reached 4 million to 5 million, the legal person has been restricted, the actual controller has disappeared, and the contradictions between the three partners are also very deep." K added.
In fact, the problem of Hankou No. 2 Factory has been around for a long time. Five months ago, Nei Sanjun reported on the business difficulties of the second factory in Hankou (sales declined, the team was cut from a few hundred to a few dozen, and the second factory in Hankou was slimmed down for the winter). At that time, the company was laying off employees on a large scale and slimming down for the winter. Now, nearly half a year later, the company's situation has not only not improved, but has fallen into a greater predicament.
According to K's statement, Hankou No. 2 Factory was actually an empty shell for a long time. The company began to pay arrears and lay off employees in 2022, and this year the company has almost no employees left, no office space, and only the smallest operating unit - "finance, legal and a few other necessary personnel".
"The only way the company can generate cash flow is Hema and Yonghui Supermarket and a few self-operated channels," said K, adding that the aforementioned offline experience store is one of them.
After the full liberalization, the tourism industry recovered, and the traffic of Lihuangpi Road in Wuhan increased sharply, which also brought popularity to the Hankou No. 2 Factory Experience Store and was able to maintain a certain cash flow.
"The flow of water is very good, with an average of 30-40w per month." K added. Of course, this may also be the main reason for its withdrawal. "The second factory experience store has become hot, and it is not excluded that other merchants want to come in, and (the property) wants to drive the second factory away through high rents." K denotes.
For a long time, although the company's internal operation encountered big problems, the Hankou No. 2 Factory Experience Store attracted many young consumers to check in and take photos with its superior geographical location and trendy retro decoration, which can be called the company's last "façade". The removal of this façade is tantamount to tearing off the last fig leaf of the Hankou No. 2 Factory.
The "second factory" of history is gone
Since its establishment, the ups and downs of Hankou No. 2 Factory on Li Huangpi Road are not only a portrayal of its own ups and downs, but also a reflection of the fate of the entire new consumer brand it represents.
In 2017, Wuhan Hengrunshi Operation Management Co., Ltd. carried out a series of nostalgic marketing operations for the predecessor of "No. 2 Factory Soda" and the original Wuhan Binjiang brand soda, and successfully created a new brand "Hankou No. 2 Factory".
After being introduced to the market, Hankou No. 2 Factory quickly became popular with its health label of "real fruit juice soda", fashionable and retro packaging, and a series of high-topic creative marketing. Although the product is positioned in the high price range of 6-8 yuan, it still attracts many young consumers to try it, and the sales of Hankou No. 2 Factory quickly increased from 90 million yuan in 2018 to 300 million yuan in 2019.
In 2019, Wuhan Hengrunshi, the operator of the second Hankou plant, moved to a century-old British-style building at No. 7 Lihuangpi Road, the heart of Wuhan's core urban area and the core of the city's historic district. Later, in less than a year, the company received three rounds of financing, two of which amounted to more than 100 million yuan.
After the abundant funds, the company expanded from a dozen people in the early days to several hundred, and "Wuhan Hengrunshi" rented the second floor of the office building. In K's view, it is very luxurious and wasteful to work in such a prime location, which is also a reflection of the company's "extensive" operation in the early stage.
Later, due to the high pricing and selling price of the products, it was difficult to sell in the market, and the company did not have new financing to come in, so the Hankou No. 2 factory had a shortage of funds, followed by layoffs and business lines. In 2022, the company vacated an office of about 300 square meters on the first floor to open an offline experience store, and employees concentrated on the second floor. By mid-2023, the office on the second floor has also been retired, and only the store on the first floor remains. Since then, the Hankou No. 2 factory has no fixed office space.
According to employee feedback, wage arrears have begun to appear in 2022, and the total amount of arrears of Hankou No. 2 Factory has reached more than 4 million yuan so far, "most of the employees have more than 100,000 yuan in arrears, and there are very few cases of arrears of 10,000 or 20,000 yuan." It is worth noting that the more than 4 million does not include the arrears of suppliers, "the amount owed by suppliers is very large", said K. Jun.
In the face of these large arrears, "Wuhan Hengrunshi" is currently dealing with it. According to insiders, "there is a big contradiction between the three partners, the actual controller Jin Yawen has not shown up since the company's accident, the second largest shareholder and the company's legal person Li Ming has been restricted from high consumption, and the other partner, Xie Zhengmao, has come out to solve the problem of salary arrears before, and now he doesn't care." ”
According to industrial and commercial information, from the second half of 2023, "Wuhan Hengrunshi" and the company's legal person have been successively listed as multiple persons subject to execution, restricting high consumption, and the amount involved has reached several million yuan. Most of the contract disputes involved are sales contracts and sales agency contract disputes.
Employees are also looking for ways to get paid, but some say they don't get out of hope. "It's useless, there is no office space in Hankou No. 2 Factory, no one can find it, and there is no factory or land, what is there to enforce?"
To the confusion and anger of the employees, although the company is basically in a state of stagnation, there are still a small number of channels in the market that continue to sell soda from the Hankou No. 2 factory, and the company also generates a small amount of cash flow, but it has never been used to repay employees' salaries.
According to K, some of the soda of Hankou No. 2 Factory on the market may be OEM production. "I heard that Jin Yawen gave the relevant trademarks of Hankou No. 2 Factory to other manufacturers for free, but I don't know if it's really free."
It is worth noting that on March 24 this year, Hankou No. 2 Factory also issued a "statement" through its official WeChat, stating that "the soda brand of Hankou No. 2 Factory has already obtained the national trademark registration certificate", and once again emphasized that it has nothing to do with the "Wuhan No. 2 Factory" founded by Lan Shili in 2023, reminding consumers to pay attention to identification.
Last year, under Lan Shili's high-profile campaign, the "Wuhan No. 2 Factory" did overshadow the Hankou No. 2 Factory. Now, a year has passed, and as the frequency of Lan Shili's platform has decreased, the popularity of Wuhan No. 2 Factory is also declining. A local beverage salesman in Wuhan told Nei Sanjun that compared with last year's strong distribution, the distribution rate of Wuhan No. 2 Factory in the terminal this year has dropped a lot.
In addition, Nei Sanjun noticed that Wuhan No. 2 Factory only has 6 SKUs in Jingdong's flagship store, and its monthly sales on several e-commerce platforms are not high. It seems that Wuhan No. 2 Factory has not developed according to Lan Shili's "ambition" a year ago.
For many people, "Hankou No. 2 Factory" and "Wuhan No. 2 Factory" do not represent the No. 2 factory soda in their hearts. The "No. 2 Factory Soda" they miss, that is, the Binjiang brand soda from the state-owned Wuhan No. 2 Beverage Factory, may only stay in their memory.
The precarious "future" of the Hankou No. 2 Factory and the fact that the Wuhan No. 2 Factory is not "thriving" can only be understood as "business is difficult to do", or is history difficult to "reproduce" after all?